There are now thousands if not millions of free articles, videos, infographics, pictures and podcasts on social media to help you succeed in your effort to engage the right audience on social media.
Hundreds of social media experts have shared strategies, steps, tips and howtos on making the most of Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest. And you may have read hundreds of articles already but your social media campaign is still not working.
It’s about time you focus on practical and actionable steps you can take right now to engage a lot more people on social media. The following are social media do’s and don’ts to help you improve in your marketing efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
1. It pays to listen!
If your personal brand business is currently not answering questions, comments or feedback from customers or prospects on Twitter or Facebook, you have already failed. It’s about time you focus on making the most of social media and doing it right. Some of the best social media practices and tips can be found here: http://boostlikes.com/blog.
Most companies have created social accounts on almost all the popular social media platforms but they don’t pay attention to what followers and customers keep saying.
The worst thing you can do on social media is to delete a negative feedback. If your customer is kind enough to leave a negative feedback where you can actually do something about it, why not take that chance and engage with the follower or individual.
You will only be making things worse for your brand of business by deleting customer complains. Deleting a feedback is an open invitation to the individual to go tell someone else about what you have done. Now, that could go viral and your reputation be at stake.
2. Don’t just listen, monitor!
One of the biggest mistakes brands and businesses are making right now on social media is that they are just not monitoring who is posting, what is being said and where they are getting the most engagement.
If you start monitoring the right way, you will know exactly where to focus your social marketing resources. You don’t have to be on every social media platform to be successful at using social media tools.
Find out if you can better engage your followers of fans with text, images, infographics or videos and narrow down on what works best.
Be on the lookout for users mentioning or replying to your business’ @handle on Twitter or talking about your brand on other social sites. Start paying attention to strategic keywords and hashtags.
Find conversations around those words and contribute your ideas, suggestions and advice when you find them. You can easily take advantage of conversations taking place around issues relevant to your brand and provide solutions to problems where necessary.
Find the relevant social media tools to help you monitor and participate in relevant conversations on selected social platforms.
3. Images tend to attract more likes, shares and comments
If you can easily solve user or prospect problems with images, they are more likely to share, retweet, like or comment on them. Images sell better than texts. Why do you think Pinterest and Instagram are so successful. Facebook is gradually making images larger and it matters to users. Don’t use thumbnails, but focus on large images with a message.
Your marketing message can be in an image. Start using relevant images in your posts on Facebook. Share great images about your business on Instagram and focus on building infographics that solve problems and share them on Pinterest.
4. Engage your customers and prospects
Make room for your customers to share relevant resources with you. Invite them to participate in an image contest on Instagram, discussions on Facebook, or infographic creation for Pinterest.
There is nothing wrong with sharing or using your followers content. They are likely to share them on almost all their social sites because your brand shared it as well. You can easily give your post a viral push by sharing your fans content.
Ask questions, request for feedback and suggestions. Ask users about how they use your product and let them share their useful experiences with your audience.
What are some of the actionable tips you have recently used to engage with your followers on social media platforms.
